The pot of earth

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GIFT OF

HOWARD ERIC

CLASS OF 1901

THE POT OF EARTH

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THE

POT OF EARTH

BY

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH

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Author of “ TAe Happy Marriage”

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
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1925

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COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ARCHIBALD MacLEISH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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These [the gardens of Adonis] were baskets or pots filled
with earth in which wheat, barley, lettuces, fennel, and
various kinds of flowers were sown and tended for eight
days, chiefly or exclusively by women. Fostered by the
sun’s heat, the plants shot up rapidly, but having no
root they withered as rapidly away, and at the end of
eight days were carried out with the images of the dead
Adonis and flung with them into the sea or into springs.

Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough

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CONTENTS

PART I

The Sowing of the Dead Corn 1

PART II

The Shallow Grass 24

PART III

The Carrion Spring

39

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THE

POT OF EARTH

‘ For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god-kissing
carrion, — Have you a daughter? ’

‘ 1 have, my lord.’

' Let her not walk i the sun — ’

PART ONE

THE SOWING OF THE DEAD CORN

Silently on the sliding Nile
The rudderless, the unoared barge
Diminishing and for a while
Followed, a fleck upon the large
Silver, then faint, then vanished, passed
Adonis who had lately died
Down a slow water with the last
Withdrawing of a fallen tide.

1

That year they went to the shore early —
They went in March and at the full moon
The tide came over the dunes, the tide came
To the wall of the garden. She remembered
standing,

A little girl in the cleft of the white oak tree,- — -
The waves came in a slow curve, crumpling
Lengthwise, kindling against the mole and
smouldering

Foot by foot across the beach until
The whole arc guttered and burned out. Her
father

Rested his spade against the tree. He said,
The spring comes with the tide, the flood
water.

Are you waiting for spring? Are you watching
for the spring?

He threw the dead stalks of the last year’s
corn

2

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Over the wall into the sea. He said,

Look, we will sow the spring now. She could
feel

Water along dry leaves and the stems fill.

Hurry, she said. Oh, hurry. She was afraid.

The surf was so slow, it dragged, it came
stumbling

Slower and slower. She tried to breathe as
slowly

As the waves broke. She kept calling. Hurry !
Hurry!

Her breath came so much faster than the
sea — •

And walking home from school, that Syrian
woman.

That — “Mrs. what did they call her” — the
Syrian

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Up at the corner, she gave her a blood-root
flower

With white petals and the scarlet ooze

Where the stem was broken. She said, In my
country

The feet of spring are stained with the red
blood.

The women go into the hills with flowers

Dark like blood, they have a song of one

Dead and the spring blossoming from his
blood —

And he comes again, they say, when the spring
comes.

She gave the flower with soft fingers. She
said.

That is an old story, — it might not be
true.

But who knows where the roots drink: they
go deep.

4

The stem lay limp and heavy in her hand
And cold, and the leaves felt lifeless. And
that night

She put it by her bed. She could not sleep,
Feeling the dead thing by her bed, feeling
The slow fingers feeling, feeling the earth
Divided by the fingers of the grass,

Of trees, of flowers, by the pressing fingers
Of grass pierced, feeling the earth pierced
And the limp stalk flowering — she could not
sleep —

One night it rained with a south wind and a
warm

Smell of thawed earth and rotting straw and
ditches

Sodden with snow and running full. She lay

5

Alone in the dark and after a long time

She fell asleep and the rain dripped in the
gutter,

Dripped, dropped, and the wind washed over
the roof

And winter melted and she felt the flow

Of the wind like a smooth river, and she
saw

The moon wavering over her through the
water —

And after the rain the brook in the north
ravine

Ran blood-red — after the rain they found
Purple hepaticas and violets.

Have you seen

Anemones growing wild in the wet ground?
She took her shoes off and the stream ran red
With a slow swirling and a swollen sound

6

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Clouding the cold sea water. She wished she
were dead

With dark flowers and her naked feet
Stained crimson —

Tell me, are the waters fed

In the hillside?

She heard the drip, the beat
Of seas gathering underground. She heard
The moon moving under Perkins Street —
Why do you circle here, O lost sea bird !
Under the root of the pine-tree, under the
stone

She heard the red surf breaking.

This occurred

When she was thirteen years —

When the withered cone
Fell from the pine-tree in the ancient spring
The river turned to blood — and they had
gone

7

Mourning the dead god — She heard them
sing

Wandering on the mountain.

Oh, she felt

Ill. It was horrible. She thought of him

Dead, and the weeping.

In March the snows melt

Dribbling between the shrivelled roots till
they brim

The soaked soil, till the moon comes, until

The moon compels them; and the surf at the
sea’s rim

Breaks scarlet and beneath the pine roots
spill

Rivers of blood. There was blood upon her
things

That night. And she had violets enough to fill

The yellow bowl with the pattern of pigeon
wings —

8

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I am afraid of the moon. I am afraid of the
moon still.

They played at weddings, she and her little
sister.

She had a mother doll made of a pine cone

With pebble eyes and they found a husk of
corn

In the leaves over the rose roots. They were
married

At four in the garden and when the tide
turned

The bridegroom was dead and she made a
boat of shingles

With a black sail and set him on the sea

Mourning.

She watched him till the sky was grey

9

And the sea grey under it. Her eyes blurred.

She seemed to be looking backward thousands
of years

Across grey water. She stared out across

Centuries of grey sea light and the black
sail

Went on and on. She said, We have known
this thing

A long time — there is a thing we know —

The light grew fainter, fainter. The ship fell,

Vanished —

She went up through the dark garden.

She put her hand into the earth.

Do you think the dead will come from the sea
ever?

Do the dead come out of the sea? Do the dead
rise

From the sea, from the salt pools, from the
stale water?

10

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I have heard the summer drip into the sea.

I have heard rain-rotted summer in the
sluices

Foaming. I have seen the yellow spill
Of last year’s summer —

The sound of the sea breaking beyond the
wall

Was surd, flat, stopped as the voice of a deaf
woman.

Dead leaves tiptoed in the path.

The trees listened —

And she saw the blind moon climb through
the colorless air.

Through the willow branches. She could feel
the moon

Lifting the numb water, and the sea fill.

She thought. The spring will come now over¬
flowing

11

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The clean earth. And what will the pine cone
do.

The skulls and kernels that the winter gath¬
ered —

What will they do —

We are having a late spring, we are having

The snow in April, the grass heaving

Under the wet snow, the grass

Burdened and nothing blossoms, grows

In the fields nothing and the garden fallow.

And now the wild birds follow

The wild birds and the thrush is tame.

Well, there is time still, there is time.
To-morrow there will be to-morrow
And summer swelling through the marrow
Of the cold trees.

12

Wait! Let us wait!

Let us wait until to-morrow. The wet
Snow wrinkles, it will rot,

It will moulder at the root
Of the oak-tree. Wait!

Oh, wait, I will gather
Grains of wheat and corn together.

Ears of corn and dry barley.

But wait, but only wait. I am barely
Seventeen: must I make haste?

To-morrow there will be a host
Of crocuses and small hairy
Snow-drops. And why, then, must I hurry?
There are things I have to do
More than just to live and die,

More than just to die of living.

I have seen the moonlight leaving
Twig by twig the elms and wondered
Where I go, where I have wandered.

13

I have watched myself alone
Coming homeward in the lane
When I seemed to see a meaning
In my going or remaining
Not the meaning of the grass.

Not the dreaming mortal grace
Of the green leaves on the year —

And why, then, should I hear
A sound as of the sowers going down
Through blossoming young hedges in the
dawn —

Winter is not done.

There were buds on the chestnut-trees, soft,
swollen,

Sticky with thick gum, that seemed to press,

14

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To thrust from the cold branches, to start
under

The impulse of intolerable loins —

The faint sweet smell of the trees sickened
her.

She walked at the sea’s edge on the blank
sand.

Certainly the salt stone that the sea divulges
At the first quarter does not fructify
In pod or tuber nor will the fruiterer cull
Delicate plums from its no-branches — Oh,
Listen to me for the word of the matter is in
me —

And if it heats in the sun it heats to itself
Alone and to none that come after it and the
rain

Impregnates it not to the slightest — Oh,
listen,

15

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You who lie on your backs in the sun, you
roots,

You roses among others who take the rain
Into you, vegetables, listen — the salt stone
That the sea divulges does not fructify.

It sits by itself. It is sufficient. But you —
Who was your great-grandfather or your
mother’s mother?

One of those mild evenings when you think
Spring is to-morrow and you can smell the
earth

Smouldering under wet leaves and there’s
still

A little light left over the pine-tree top
And you stand listening —

So she closed the gate
16

And walked up Gloucester Street and coming
home

It was pitch dark at the railroad station they
Jostled against her O excuse me excuse me
And somebody said laughing she couldn’t hear
Her throat pounded something she ran ran —
What do you want? What do you want me
to do?

What can I do? Can I put roots into the
earth?

Can leaves grow out of me? Can I bear leaves
Like the thorn, the lilac —

Why did you not come?
Why did you let me go then if you knew?

They seemed to be waiting,
The willow-trees by the wall,

17

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Fidgeting with the sea wind in their branches,
Unquiet in the warm air.

She stood between them. She said.

You who have set your candles toward the
sea

Two nights already and no sound
Only the water.

Tell me, do the dead come out of the sea?
Does the spring come from the sea?

Does the dead god

Come again from the water?

The willow-trees stirred in the wind,
Stilled,

Stirred in the wind —

She said. It may be that he has come,

It may be he has come and gone and I not
knowing —

18

Easter Sunday they went to Hooker’s Grove,
Seven of them in one automobile
Laughing and singing.

Sea water flows

Over the meadows at the full moon,

The sea runs in the ditches, the salt stone
Drowns in the sea.

And some one said. Look! Look!
The flowers, the red flowers. And her hand
felt

The blood-root stem — and on the Baalbec
road

Young men with garlands of anemones
And naked girls in girdles of wild rose
Splashed the thick dust from their thudding
feet

And the sunlight jingled into grains of gold
And away off, away off, far away
The singing on the mountain —

19

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Shall we go

Up through the Gorge or round by Ryan’s
place?

I’ll show you where the wild boar killed a man
Good Friday night, and where he died, they
say.

There are flowers all red.

Who is this that comes
Crowned with red flowers from the sea? Who
comes

Into the hills with flowers?

On the hill pastures
She heard a girl calling her lost cows.

Her voice hung like a mist over the grass.
Over the apple-trees.

She bit her mouth

To keep from crying.

On the third day

The cone of the pine is broken, the eared corn

20

Broken into the earth, the seed scattered.
The bridegroom comes again at the third day.
The sowers have come into the fields sowing.

Well, at the Grove there was a regular crowd
And a band at the Casino, so they ate
Up in the woods where you could hear the
music

And the dogs barking, and after lunch she lay
Out in the open meadow. She could feel
The sun through her dress —

Don’t you want to dance?
They’re all dancing — that wonderful tune —
Are you listening? Aren’t you listening?
The band

Start — stuttered and
Oh, won’t you?

No —

Just a little while. Just a little bit —
21

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No! Oh, No! Oh, No!

Far, far away

The singing on the mountain. She could hear
The voices singing, she could hear them come
With songs, with the red flowers. They have
found him.

They have brought him from the hills —

Why, it was wonderful! Why, all at once
there were leaves.

Leaves at the end of a dry stick, small, alive
Leaves out of wood. It was wonderful.

You can’t imagine. They came by the wood
path

And the earth loosened, the earth relaxed,
there were flowers

Out of the earth ! Think of it ! And oak-trees
Oozing new green at the tips of them and
flowers

22

Squeezed out of clay, soft flowers, limp
Stalks flowering. Well, it was like a dream.

It happened so quickly, all of a sudden it
happened —

PART TWO

THE SHALLOW GRASS

The plow of tamarisk wood which is shared
with black copper

And drawn by a yoke of oxen all black
Drags in the earth.

The earth is made ready with copper,

The earth is prepared for the seed by the feet
of oxen

That are shod with brass.

They said. Good Luck ! Good Luck ! What a
handsome couple!

Isn’t she lovely though! He can’t keep his
hands

Away from her. Ripe as a peach she is. Good
Luck!

Good-bye, Good-bye —

24

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They took the down express,
The five-five. She had the seat by the
window —

He can’t keep —

She sat there looking out
And the fields were brown and raw from the
spring plowing,

The fields were naked, they were stretched
out bare.

Rigid, with long welts, with open wounds.
Stripped —

In the flat sunlight she could see
The fields heave against the furrows, lift,
Twist to get free —

— his hands —

Why, what’s the matter?
We’re almost there now, only half an hour.
And we’ll have our supper in our rooms. I’ve
taken

25

The best room, what they call the bridal
chamber —

What they call — what do they call it? —

And I dressed up

All in these new things not a red ribbon
You ever had on before and mind you keep
The shoes you were married in and all to go
Into a closed room with a bed in it,

To lie in a shut chamber

Something

What they call —
the chalked letters

does he say

That

I wonder

or what —

She held his hand
Against her breast under the flowers. She felt

26

The warmth of it like the warmth of the sun
driving

Downward into her heart.

And all those fields

Ready, the earth stretched out upon those
fields

Ready, and now the sowers —

What is this thing we know that they have
not told us?

What is this in us that has come to bed

In a closed room?

I tell you the generations
Of man are a ripple of thin fire burning
Over a meadow, breeding out of itself
Itself, a momentary incandescence
Lasting a long time, and we that blaze
Now, we are not the fire, for it leaves us.

27

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I tell you we are the shape of a word in the air
Uttered from silence behind us into silence
Far, far beyond, and now between two strokes
Of the word’s passing have become the word —
That jars on through the night;

and the stirred air

Deadens,

is still —

They lived that summer in a furnished flat
On the south side of Congress Street and no
Sun, but you could look into the branches
Of all those chestnut-trees, and then they had
A window-box, but the geraniums
Died leaving a little earth and the wind
Or somehow one June morning there was grass
Sprouting —

28

Si Si Si

Si SlSl

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How does your garden grow, your garden
In the shallow dish, in the dark, how does it
grow?

To-morrow we bear the milk corn to the river.
To-morrow we go to the spring with the pale
stalks :

Has your garden ripened?

She used to water them
Morning and evening and the blades grew
Yellow a sort of whitey yellowy all
Fluffy

hairs from a dead skull

they say

The skulls of dead girls —

Won’t it let you die
Even, burgeoning from your bones, your dead
Bones, from your body, not even die, not just
Be dead, be quiet?

What is this thing that sprouts
29

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From the womb, from the living flesh, from
the live body?

What does it want? WTiy won’t it let you
alone

Not even dead?

Why, look, you are a handful
Of fat mould breeding corruption, a pinch
Of earth for seed fall —

How does your garden grow?

Hot nights the whole room reeked with the
fetid smell

Of chestnut flowers, the live smell, the fertile
Odor of blossoms. She half drowsed. She
dreamed

Of long hair fragrant with almonds growing
Out of her dead skull, she dreamed of one
Buried, and out of her womb the corn grow¬
ing.

30

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Construe the soundless, slow
Explosion of a summer cloud, decipher
The sayings’ of the wind beneath the pantry
door.

Say when the moon will come, when the rain
will follow.

Unless the rain comes soon the colored petals
Sheathing the secret stigma of the rose
Will fall, will wither, and the swollen womb
Close, harden, upon a brittle stalk
Seal up its summer, and the hollyhock.

The broom, the furze, the poppy will be¬
come,

Their petals fallen, all their petals fallen,
Pease-cods — seedboxes — haws —

It should have rained when the moon
Spilled out the old moon’s shadow.

31

Seven days I have been waiting for the rain
now,

The sound of water.

Seven days I have been walking up and down
in the house.

There was nothing to do, there was nothing
to do but wait,

But wait, but walk and walk

And at night hear

The patter of dry leaves on the window and
wake.

And waking, think, The rain! Yes — and hear

The patter of dry leaves.

There was nothing to do, there was nothing
to do but wait.

But wait, but wait, but wait, and the wind
whispering

Something I couldn’t understand beneath the
door,

32

Something that I wouldn’t understand.

And the grass stems

Stiffening to bear the headed grain,

The rose.

The hawthorn
Covering with bony fingers
Their swollen wombs,

The summer shrivelling to husks, to shells.
Pease-cods, seedboxes,

The summer sucking through a withered straw
Enough stale water for a few beans,

For a handful of swelling peas in a sealed
bladder,

For the living something in a closed womb.

Upon the sand

This brine, these bubbles —

The wave of summer is drowned in the salt
land.

33

And I, the climbing tip
Of that old ivy, time.

To waver swaying over a blind wall
With all

To-day to dream in,

and, behind.

The never-resting root
Through my live body drives
The living shoot,

The climbing ivy-tip of time.

I am a room at the end of a long journey
The windows of which open upon the night
Or perhaps
Nothing —

I am a room at a passage end where lies
Huddled in darkness one that door by door

34

Has come time’s length through his old windy
house
For this —

For what, then?

Neither.

I am a woman in a waterproof
Walking beside the river in an autumn rain.
Above the trolley bridge the market gardens
Are charnel fields where the unburied corn
Rots and the rattling pumpkin vines lift
brittle fingers

Warning — of what? — and livid, broken
skulls

Of cabbages gape putrid in a pond —

My face under the cold rain is cold
As winter leaves that cover up the year.

35

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I feel the wind as the numb earth feels it.
I feel the heavy seed in the warm dark
And the spring ripening —

And what is this to be a woman? Why,

To be a woman, a sown field.

Let us

Attribute a significance perhaps

Not ours to what we are compelled to be

By being it:

as privately forestall
The seed’s necessity by welcoming
The necessary seed;

likewise prevent

Death with the apothegm that all men die.
Yes.

And then wake alone at night and lie here
36

Stripped of my memories, without the chairs
And walls and doors and windows that have
been

My recognition of myself, my soul’s
Condition, the whole habit of my mind.

Yes, wake, and of the close, unusual dark
Demand an answer, crying, What am I?

Ah, What! A naked body born to bear
Nakedness suffering. A sealed mystery
With hands to feed it, with unable legs,

With shamed eyes meaning — what? What
do they mean

The red haws out there underneath the snow,
What do they signify?

Glory of women to grow big and die
Fruitfully, glory of women to be broken.
Pierced by the green sprout, severed, tossed
aside

37

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Fruitfully —

Yes, all right, Yes, Yes,
But what about me —

I am —

What am I —

What do you think

What do you take me for!

Snow, the snow —

When shall I be delivered?
When will my time come?

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PART THREE

THE CARRION SPRING

The flowers of the sea are brief.
Lost flowers of the sea.

Salt petal, bitter leaf.

The fruitless tree —

The flowers of the sea are blown
Dead, they blossom in death:
The sea furrows are sown
With a cold breath.

I heard in my heart all night
The sea crying. Come home.

Come home. I thought of the white
Cold flowers of foam.

39

In March, when the snow melted, he was born.
She lay quiet in the bed. She lay still,
Dying.

Under the iron rumble
Of the streets she heard the rolling
Boulders that the flood tides tumble
Climbing sea by sea the shoaling
Ledges, — she could hear the tolling
Sea.

She lay alone there.

In the morning

They came and went about her,

Moving through the room. She asked them
Whispering. They told her.

He is here. She said, Who is it.

Who is it that is born, that is here?

She said, Do you not know him?

Have you seen the green blades gathered?

40

Have you seen the shallow grain?

Do you know, — do you not know him?
Laugh, she said, I am delivered,

I am free, I am no longer
Burdened. I have borne the summer
Dead, the corn dead, the living
Dead. I am delivered.

He has left me now. I lie here
Empty, gleaned, a reaped meadow.
Fearing the rain no more, not fearing
Spring nor the flood tides overflowing
Earth with their generative waters — -
Let me sleep, let me be quiet.

I can see the dark sail going
On and on, the river flowing
Red with the melting of the snow:

What is this thing we know? —

Under the iron street the crying

41

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Voices of the sea. Come home,

Come to your house. Come home.

She heard

A slow crying in the sea, Come home.

Come to your house —

Go secretly and put me in the ground —

Go before the moon uncovers.

Go where now no night wind hovers,

Say no word above me, make no sound.

Heap only on my buried bones
Cold sand and naked stones
And come away and leave unmarked the
mound.

Let not those silent hunters hear you pass:
Let not the trees know, nor the thirsty grass.
Nor secret rain

42

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To breed from me some living thing again,
But only earth —

For fear my body should be drowned
In her deep silences and never found.

The slow spring blossomed again, a cold
Bubbling of the corrupted pool, a frothy
Thickening, a ferment of soft green
Bubbling —

Who knows how deep the roots drink?
They drink deep.

And you, what do you hope?
What do you believe, walking
Alone in an old garden, staring down
Beneath the shallow surface of the grass,

The floating green? What do you say you are?

43

And what was she that you remember, staring
Down through the pale grass, what was
she?

And what is this that grows in an old garden?

Listen, I will interpret to you. Look, now,

I will discover you a thing hidden,

A secret thing. Come, I will conduct you
By seven doors into a closed tomb.

I will show you the mystery of mysteries.

I will show you the body of the dead god
bringing forth

The corn. I will show you the reaped ear
Sprouting.

Are you contented? Are you answered?
Come.

I will show you chestnut branches budding

44

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Beyond a dusty pane and a little grass
Green in a window-box and silence stirred,
Settling and stirred and settling in an empty

room —

PHILLIPS ACADEMY

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